JUNE 6, THURSDAY

ENERGY

One of the points that Hariri makes is that humans have plenty of clean energy sources. Our first source of energy was through photosynthesis, plants eaten by animals or humans or animals eaten by humans. This condemned both animals and most humans to hard physical labor. This shifted to water mills and wind mills. But that shifted to coal and petroleum which is both not limitless and causes global warming. But he argues that once we harness more of the energy from the sun or the tides or wind or nuclear power we will have plenty of clean energy and global warming may be slowed down and reversed. Not in my lifetime, but in my parents life time, were the first automobiles and the first large scale pumping of oil, also a result of photosynthesis. And only a generation or two before that were the first coal fired steam engines which fueled trains and ships and the heating of houses and the entire Industrial Revolution. So the use of fossil fuels is relatively new and now is being phased out although maybe not quickly enough to save us from significant global warming. But it could be that just as we used to worry about not being able to feed the world before the green revolution, our fear of either running out of energy or serious global warming may be a passing thing.

If true this undercuts another of my assumptions about the future of mankind. I have assumed that shifting from fossil fuels to solar and wind was a shift from abundant power to power that is rarer and harder to access.